


aletheiacracy

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 08:52:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6045492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>(humans, of course, can lie to Cities. They aren't often believed, but that is hardly the point.</em>
</p><p><em>The point is that they </em>can<em>)</em></p><p> </p><p>Orxford's humans have a tendency for being inveterate liars. Lyra's Oxford taught them well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aletheiacracy

 

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”  
― Plato, The Republic

Cities have no deamons, not as such. They can grow, though, and multiply amongst themselves, as the good Lord told them to. Human's are their children, moths always taunting the fire, always dying too early. Always so hungry. They don't last long, not like their ideas, and Oxford keeps her voice steady, immortalizes their legacies. It is a common subject of study, in her classrooms and courtyards, how a City's voice reaches higher than that of the mortals' in their keeping.

Their silence, well. What mortals don't know can't hurt them.

(This is not a question. Or is it?)

Oxford is no exception. That is to say, she has no deamon (no soul to speak of, Cambridge likes to say, but that's another matter)

She is an oddity in other ways. Bright Oxford, the maverick scholar. Every pub in the city knows her by name, by sight, by the dark of her hair and the sharpness of her mind. Her laugher is gritty like the bottom of her canals, rusty like old tarnished copper. Cheeks and arms splotched with the marks of illnesses; an upturned nose like a question. Under her Master's robes, brown toes peek at the world.

Her children take after her, throw mud and chase each other, fight fiercely and love loudly, and none so much as the girl. Golden girl, with autumn hair and cruel eyes, a sensible daemon never heeded, never forgotten.

Lyra has no mother (Eve had no mother, remember? Only a Father, and that one was never much use), only a mysterious uncle with a predator's stride and a heathen's smile. The crow-men are too busy in their high currents to care for one lone wildcat-girl, but that is fine.

That is fine because she has her city (because she never needed them, never needed anyone but Pan and her whole tattered self).

Oxford dotes on her. All Cities have their favorites, it's well known. She is no good with human's, the way charming Suffolk is, nor so high handed as London. She'd rather get in a debate with Edinburgh or go out for drinks with Glasgow than wear satin dresses and titter coyly behind fans. There is nothing of soft-handed artifice that he can teach Lyra. All her fingers are callused, from pens as well as rowing paddles, scars littering every knuckle.

But this she can give her: late night tales, watching the stars turn from the University's roof. Lessons Lyra hates but Pan understands. Jam-kisses on her nose during stolen brunches. Tips on how to spun words and steal steaming buns, braids that Lyra proclaims loudly to hate but caresses softly when she thinks Oxford is not look. It's not much, but it's something.

Oxford is cold marble halls, winding streets ruled by winding laws. The river runs ever filthy, and in it drift gypsy boats and northern news up and down the docks. Oxford laughs with the muddy children, fears for them. She had been a child herself too, once (riding oxen through the creeks. Haggling and fucking with the norse shield-maidens. Stroking a human's deamon for the first time, and the teeth scars still etched on her hand. A monk's mouth, whiskery on her ear) even if she never got the hang of growing old.

There are thieves under her nose. Powdered, uniformed thieves, drunk on theology and progress, manicured claws sinking into young shoulders. Oxford stalks her streets at night, saves some lost children. The few lucky ones. Most nights she is too busy with another formula, a new argument to notice how many small beds were empty.

Her hears ring with song. It takes her a long time to realize it's a surge of trumpets, not drums. Heavenly hymns are ever so subtle, until they aren't.

When she notices it is too late. Roger the kitchen boy is gone, Lyra and Pantalaimon mad with worry, walking head fast into a gossamer web. Knitted by soft-hands, naturally, the manicured kind Oxford turns her upturned nose at. When Oxford finally does poke her head out of her ivory tower, it is almost a surprise. She had forgotten humans could lie as well as Cities.

(humans, of course, can lie to Cities. They aren't often believed, but that is hardly the point.

The point is that they _can_ )

She lies somberly to the Magisterium, lies honestly at the Head, lies merrily to Lyra. Pantalaimon flicks his squirrel's tail at her. She leaves them with a compass on her pocket and a kiss on his fur, silver words lingering on their minds to be woven at will. A child's weapon, perhaps, but no less sharp for it.

It is a child's war, after all. Eden had been a playground once, did no one remember that?

(Cities have no daemons. Cities are not deities.

One of these things is not like the other)

When the Magisterium comes with their gilded guillotine, Oxford does not pray.

She curses at the sky instead. Cities do not pray. They are flesh made dust, dust made flesh. They do not pray.

Perhaps, then, they ought be the ones prayed to.

 


End file.
